" As a parent, what behaviors might I suspect as indicative of this disorder? The more general traits that may be observed include awkwardness in social situations, an intense preoccupation with certain specific (often unusual) topics, self-directed orientation, a lack of understanding of social cues, and clumsiness caused by lack of motor coordination. What is meant by "severe and sustained impairment in social interaction"? A child with AS often has problems with normally developed verbal as well as non-verbal interaction tools.
Are they re... [Eur J Paediatr Neurol. 2013. 'DSM-V is taking away our identity': The rea... [Health (London). 2013. Autism and other pervasive developmental di... [Can J Psychiatry. 1998. [Autistic psychopathy or pervasive developmenta... [Nihon Rinsho. 2007. Autism Spectrum Disorder: Foren... [J Appl Res Intellect Disabil. 2013. Neural correlate of autistic-like t... [Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2013.

Confusing Asperger’s with mental illness, and mental illness with evil. Adam Lanza, the shooter in last week’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut As a baby reporter in Texas, I covered what we euphemistically called mental health services in the state.

These “services,” reserved for the dangerously ill, involved brief, groggy hospital stays followed up with a handshake, a script for enough pills to stun a moose, and all best wishes: See you soon! Unless something worse happened, the patients were bound to be back. And just as surely, whenever I’d return to the newsroom after a trip to one of the state-run mental hospitals, my editor could be counted on to joke, “You didn’t catch anything while you were there, did you?”

Schizophrenia cooties, I guess he meant, or bipolar bugs.
Asperger’s Syndrome. History Asperger’s Disorder was first described in the 1940s by Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger, who observed autistic-like behaviors and difficulties with social and communication skills in boys who had normal intelligence and language development.

Many professionals felt Asperger’s Disorder was simply a milder form of autism and used the term “high-functioning autism” to describe these individuals. Uta Frith, a professor at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience of University College London and editor of Autism and Asperger Syndrome, describes individuals with Asperger’s Disorder as “having a dash of Autism.” Asperger’s Disorder was added to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) in 1994 as a separate disorder from autism. However, there are still many professionals who consider Asperger’s Disorder a less severe form of autism.

Characteristics Interests in a particular subject may border on the obsessive.
Unvaccinated Children Madness. By J.B.

Handley If you want to make someone who defends our current bloated vaccine schedule and believes the science proves vaccines don't cause autism go bonkers, just mention unvaccinated kids. How else to explain some of the altogether nutty things that have come out of the mouths of the vaccine schedule's designated defenders? I'll start with the gold-standard for goofy-speak from Julie Gerberding, an answer so classic it should be entombed for posterity, triggered by a great question from our very own Dan Olmsted. Dan Olmsted: Has the government ever looked at the autism rate in an unvaccinated U.S. population, and if not, why not? But as we're learning, just trying to look at autism in a community the size of Atlanta, it's very, very difficult to get an effective numerator and denominator to get a reliable diagnosis.

I think those kind of studies could be done and should be done. "Why do some parents avoid vaccinating their children? J.B.
Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses. + Author Affiliations Reprints or correspondence: Dr.

A worldwide increase in the rate of autism diagnoses—likely driven by broadened diagnostic criteria and increased awareness—has fueled concerns that an environmental exposure like vaccines might cause autism. On 28 February 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, and colleagues [1] published a paper in The Lancet that described 8 children whose first symptoms of autism appeared within 1 month after receiving an MMR vaccine. Several issues undermine the interpretation by Wakefield et al. [1] of this case series.